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Guatemalan students were asked how to build solidarity between Black Lives Matter and struggles resisting transnational mining ventures in Guatemala.
By the Chiapas Support Committee
Founded by ex-guerillas in 2004, the Maya Mam Institute honors the culture of the Indigenous, teaches in Mam, and fights illiteracy which is a reflection of the extreme poverty that people face in Guatemala. Despite a wealth of natural resources, Guatemala is one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere.
Students here insist that Guatemala’s government is dishonest from head to foot, that government officials have long extracted money from the poor to enrich themselves, and that mining has destroyed biodiversity while hydroelectric projects are creating irreparable harm to watersheds that serve all Central America.
When we visited, students from ages 12 to 16 were designing posters expressing their outrage over the government’s abuses. The posters supported protests that took place on May 30 and 31 in front of the presidential palace where the people demanded the president’s resignation. They pointed to big businesses that do not pay taxes, saying poverty is caused by the brutality of the elites, who control 98 percent of arable land.
The students are knowledgeable about social movements and the current political situation, namely, the vast corruption scandal that involves president and former general Otto Perez Molina, his vice president Roxana Baldetti, who recently resigned, and three other ministers who have been forced to step down in the thick of massive popular protests. In recent months, 80,000 to 100,000 people have taken the streets demanding the resignation of the president.
One of the teachers said political activities such as these teach the youth to recognize who is lying to them, so they are not easily deceived. He added, the goal is not to train students to be politicians, but rather, organizers: to make sure they are informed and not lied to in the ways that occur in most schools across the country.
The Mayan community of Colotenango was one of the first in Guatemala to organize against the massive mining projects pushed by transnational companies, in alliance with the economic elites who control the state (commonly referred to as “the Oligarchy” or “Eight Families”). The community of Colotenango also led the struggle to dismantle the civilian patrols imposed on Indigenous Guatemala by the rightwing state during the 1980s, which forced one million boys and men to serve as cannon fodder and free labor during the revolutionary war.
Ties that bind
During our visit, the Chiapas Support Committee held workshops on Black Lives Matter in the United States, the Grassroots Youth Empowerment Association in Belize, and the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. We spoke of a Zapatista community we visited called the Tenth of April, founded after Indigenous revolutionaries liberated lands owned by large-scale ranchers in the uprising of 1994. The rancher there had forced people to work for little to no pay. He denied the poor access to their river and unleashed huge mastiffs on so-called trespassers whenever anyone tried to bathe or collect water there. In 1994, the rich fled the region when the Zapatistas rose up in arms, and from that time forward, people have lived freely and governed themselves on their ancestors’ lands.
These gains have not been uncontested by the right-wing. In 2014, the community of the Tenth of April was terrorized by a neighboring community that had been bought off by the national government. They attacked the Zapatistas, causing severe injuries, and blocked ambulances. The Zapatistas responded by calling thousands of compañeros from all across the region to come help defend their lands and defeat, through peaceful means, the aggressors. For several months, 500 Zapatistas guarded the community night and day on week-long rotations, until finally the hostile neighbors retreated in their attempts to encroach on Zapatista territory.
Students then expanded on the current political situation in Guatemala. President Otto Perez Molina has been denounced by the people for his involvement in narco-trafficking, yet he is refusing to step down from office. The vice president and three other ministers, on the other hand, have resigned. In the public health system, patients are denied treatment, medicine and dialysis, supposedly for lack of funds. Yet it has been reported that 2.7 million quetzales per week (about US$355,000) have been diverted illegally into the hands of government officials from taxpayer contributions.
Millions of tax dollars have vanished into the bank accounts of these corrupt government officials, several of whom began their political ascents during the genocide in the 1980s. Notably, president Perez Molina had command responsibility when he was an officer during the war. One particular set of the many atrocities he ordered took the lives of more than 700 Guatemalans. The people have not forgotten these crimes and are outraged by his presidency.
Through the United Nations, in a one-of-a-kind experiment to combat corruption, the International Commission Against Impunity (its acronym is CICIG in Spanish) was created in 2007. It mainly investigates high-level corruption and narco-trafficking cases, but also investigates human rights cases. This commission found that U.S guns and grenades, intended to battle drug rings, have been sold to narco-traffickers by the Guatemalan military. The Guatemalan military has tried to shut down CICIG since its inception, for reasons that are obvious.
Histories and images of oppression and genocide against Blacks in the Americas were shared with the youth, as well as news on the organized resistance of Blacks in the United States. Given the global dimension of Black oppression and resistance, the students analyzed Black organizing in neighboring Belize as well. We shared the work of the Belize Grassroots Youth Empowerment Association (BGYEA), a people’s organization fighting to reclaim Black ancestral territories and build power through collective practices. Many who are participating in BGYEA’s reclamation of 1,850 acres (750 hectares) are first-time land owners. Their efforts are a critical example of Black movements for autonomy in the Kriol-speaking Caribbean and Central America.
We asked the young people how they thought we could build solidarity between Black Lives Matter and struggles resisting transnational mining ventures in Guatemala. One student responded that we need to let each other know of our different struggles. We asked what these movements share in common, and the students answered that we all face the assaults of imperialism and capitalism. Together, they said, we should bring these evils down.
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